1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for printing characters and ruled lines and a method of printing the same and, more specifically, it relates to an electronic apparatus, such as a word processor and a personal computer, of which printing unit prints inputted characters and ruled lines and a method of printing characters and ruled lines including lateral and longitudinal lines.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a conventional word processor, for example, a lateral line inputted on the boundary between pages is ruled on the upside of the first line (row of characters) after the boundary, i.e., the upside of the first line of the second page, in printing. This will be fully apparent from FIGS. 5 and 6. FIG. 5 illustrates inputted list information outputted on a display screen. Herein, a lateral line is inputted on the page boundary between two listed elements "electronic notepad" and "electronic translating machine". In printing the list elements of FIG. 5 in a printing unit, after the elements are printed to the boundary between two pages, the previous page is turned to the following page and the lateral line inputted on the boundary is ruled only on the upside of the first line of the following new page, as shown in FIG. 6.
In the conventional line printing apparatus stated above, when a lateral line is inputted on the bottom of the line just before the boundary between two pages, i.e., the foot line of the previous page or the bottom of the last line before the boundary in listing, there arises no problem with display on the screen but not with printing; that is, the lateral line on the bottom of the foot line of the previous page is not ruled in printing, and hence the lateral line must be manually ruled in position after the printing. However, it is time consuming work and besides the manually finished line is apt to be uneven, and therefore the last line before the boundary between the pages is often intentionally left blank to make an open block for the list. In such a case, however, when the list is modified for adding a new item or deleting an existing item from the list, or changing a line space, a line or lines of inputted information elements slides up or down or the page contains an increased or decreased number of lines, so that the blank line positioned in the last line before the boundary of the pages slides up or down and a line of information elements enters the last line before the boundary. Accordingly, it is necessary to regulate the position of the blank line each time the blank line slides. If a number of modifications and changes of the list are required, the input operation efficiency in listing worsens all the more.
The prior art embodiments related to such a printing apparatus and a printing method are disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 153443/1981, 117281/1981, 22287/1982 and 65885/1984.